A note about AFL Women’s

The inaugural AFL Women’s season starts today and I’m excited. The advent of AFLW is great for women and girls, who finally have a professional league at the highest level. It’s great for fans generally, who get to break our footy fast earlier in the year than ever before. It’s also great for footy nerds, who get to see what the game looks like with only 16 players on the ground for each team and a few other rule changes.

One thing it’s not good for, at least not yet, is statistical analysis. For The Arc’s AFL analysis, I rely on having a large amount of data on players and teams, stretching back many decades. The AFLW, as a new league, obviously lacks the sort of richness of data that comes with time. It might be a little while before we’re able to do anything interesting with AFLW data. You won’t find any AFLW graphs here for the time being, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested.

If the league chooses to release detailed AFLW data to the public in an accessible format, The Arc will feature AFLW graphs soon enough.